Decay

Trouble stares us in the face. The whole world is in shambles. Humanity is on the brink of a great, terrible fall.

 I’m starring at the darkening cloud beyond my window, thinking about the decay that has hit the world. It’s not far away, on some TV channels or on the crinkly pages of newspapers. The decay is right here, few yards across the street. I watch with dismay the events that have become the order of the day: nude ladies moving about shamelessly, breasts bouncing in the air. My eyes settle on two women, sauntering along the street, lips contorted seductively, as though the street was not already flooded with debauchery. With the way their hands are knitted, it’s clear what they are: a couple.

Their nakedness does not bother them; it bothers no one. It is the height of fashion, nowadays. Clothes of all kinds are becoming obsolete. These women remind me of hominids and apes; perhaps, humankind is returning to its early beginnings. Their skins are laden with inks. Tattoo, no matter how profuse, is not even the fad; some have it ingrained in their internal organs through special surgery. It’s the age of madness, after all.  

                                                                                  ***

       I remember how this decay started: as an age of humanism, as series of revolutions particularly in Europe hoisting the ideals of liberty and liberality, as hippies-movement, as cultural awakening, and as a nameless wave of something that flooded the globe shortly after the Second World War. Then, it was not called decay. It bore a different name, and had upon its face the mask of pleasant things, like civilization, civil rights movement, free thinking, modernity and new spirituality. It was desirable, many basked in it. 

Young men and women embraced it with delight. Bodies became barer. Skirts got shorter, and breasts and hips, once dignified and held in esteem, gradually came to limelight. The age of standards slowly waned, and lawlessness became the new law.  Preachers refashioned their sermons and worship services to accommodate the trend. Scholars emulated it with passion, and wrote about it, building doctrines around what some chose to call postmodernism.

As the years wore on, this nameless trend gave birth to several wayward children. And everywhere in the world, countless grandchildren sprouted up. Soon, things fell apart—not the kind Achebe wrote about, but the kind no one ever thought about. The world, today, is different in a very bizarre way. Had I time enough, I would have stayed a little longer to describe in details how rotten everything is.

           Do you remember America, that quirky country that was once at the center of the world? America is to this generation like the ancient Egypt of our days, whose glories resided in history books and a few decrepit stones. The decay started there, in the great nations of the west, and spread like virus to the entire world. Do you remember how the countries of earth frenetically legitimized incest, rape, and other things of that sort? Well, that was over seventy years ago.

America was outrun by other emerging world powers, like Pakistan, Indonesia, Austria, and Ghana. But that entire “world power” thing changed after the war that devastated the nations of the world in 2067. Now, we speak not in terms of world, but of cities. The name of my city is Pleasuria. I hear that other cities exist, but it’s just hearsay. No one knows for sure what is out there, beyond the high walls of Pleasuria. Adventurers daily return with stories of monsters and encounter with zombies. Maybe, those are just stories. My attention is on this city, on this growing decay, on these two naked women who seem to be up to something very spiteful.  

                                                                   ***

A young man, equally unclothed, swaggers towards the women from the opposite direction.  He is huge and sturdy, and with a little bristly mustache. You would call him handsome. But such words have become obsolete. Things are described with an air of vulgarity; even the sky, in all its awesomeness, is likened to a toddler’s drippy nose. The language, called “Shitlish” is not like the ones of the former world.

  From this rotten language of obscenities I have labored in vain to stay away. I’ve advised my sons and daughters to avoid it altogether. But how can they? It is everywhere. Everyone speaks it. And once in a while, Shitlish slids into my vocabulary.

            “Halo holes!” the man says, and presses with one hand the bloated breasts of one of the women, as the new custom demands. “Where yau’ll heading?” he adds, and says other things entirely in the hellish language. I take my attention away, and when I venture to their direction a minute after, I see what, to you, may be incredibly strange and detestable. The man and the woman are on the ground, by the side of the road, gradually growing sweaty. Need I tell you what they are doing there, in that open square, before all eyes?

            In my city, nothing is promiscuous. Some passersby turn to them as to a piece of brick and pass. Others, consisting mostly of teenagers, stand by and cheer, as the man and the woman go on with their act obliviously.

         I take my eyes hurriedly away from the scene. My eyes are sufficiently moist, but, what is the point crying? I can do nothing now. If I go out there to talk to anyone, I will be heckled and labeled ancient, orthodox, and even mad. But I don’t fear the labels and the stigma, as I fear what the government would do to me. People like me are the rebels, the few folks in town who continually stand in the way of change. Some of us are in psychiatric homes, where family members had sent them long ago; others are in prisons, for being rebellious, for telling people about the old ways of the primitive fathers.

There are no churches in my Pleasuria, and no schools as in my days. Schools are now worse than night clubs—not the night clubs of nowadays, however. Children are now free, like the boundless air, to wear whatever they like and to behave in any way they dim appropriate.            

Reading has become old-fashioned, an act reserved for backwards like us. Our scientists have developed devices to replace the traditional way of feeding facts into the brain. All you need is a click, and volumes of facts rush into your brain immediately. I remember those bygone days when smart folks, so called, revolted against examination, saying things like, “it breeds fear; it is not the true test of knowledge.” Well, in my city, there are no examinations or tests or assignments. Some don’t have an inkling what those even mean. Thanks to these proponents of liberty and to the government for accepting their ideas.

        Long live liberty! Everyone is at last free. Each man is his own government. The government is merely a symbol, a powerless one for that matter. Long live democracy! Everyone is in charge; no one is in charge, therefore. Service and philanthropy died a century ago. Selfishness has become the highest virtue, as the philosopher, Ayn Rand, had preached long ago.

         Guns are everywhere, even in the hands of toddlers, and crime rate—well, the idea of crime itself has become obsolete—has surged to its very summit. Words like wrongdoing, or sin, or evil, are fast disappearing from minds and from dictionaries. Did the thinkers of old not say that nothing is good or bad, but that thinking makes it so? I wish, I honestly wish, they were still alive to witness this madness.

                                                                                ***

         I’ve sat here for hours, thinking of how I—an outlaw—can deliver my city from this decay. No idea yet. How do I even start? There are no standards, and, in some severe cases, no knowledge of what standards are (or were.)Upon what foundation will I base my argument? I can’t make any allusions to God, and risk being ridiculed and possibly forced into confinement again. I think of those who used to say in those days that religion makes the world worse, and that the world would be a better place, a paradise perhaps, without religion, without the belief in deities. They sounded right; but they were wrong. I would have bowed to their line of argument had I not lived a little longer than they, to behold the true state of a world without religion. I’ve seen a world ruled completely by science and human whims and caprices. It’s a rotten world.

         I feel a ray of hope; I don’t know how this is possible, for, in my eyes, we’ve reached a dead end, a point of no return. Should I go out there and make myself an idiot? Should I try and talk to some people in the street, about ideals long forgotten? How will they receive my message? It is difficult to correct people who think they’ve done no wrong, but it is perhaps impossible to correct people to whom the concept of right and wrong has become archaic. Maybe, there is nothing I can do. Maybe, things will go on this way for a very long time.